Community Blogs

Tracking Graduations and Commencements

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Since 1998, David has worked predominantly in the operations management industry. Affectionately known by many as “DK”, “The Mayor”, or “The Walking, Talking Library”, David manages the Dude Community and is a featured speaker for webinars, podcasts, videos and association events. He collaborates with subject matter experts and organizational leaders to research and develop content that supports the Dude's clients, accelerates their professional development, addresses their professional pains, and to provide fun and inspiring information.Read more by Dave Kornegay

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In MaintenanceDirect and ITDirect, users have the ability to create work items. In FSDirect, you have the ability to set up schedules and services. They can be used independently or together. My personal leaning would be to create a Project in MaintenanceDirect or ITDirect called "Graduations", but you could also use "Graduations" as a Budget as that translates across even more SchoolDude applications.

Why do I use Graduations as a Project or Budget and not a Purpose? Because Purpose is why you are taking an action and here are some examples: setting up furniture (Event Setup), installing equipment (Equipment Installation), moving items (Equipment Moving), audio-visual setup (A-V Setup), lawn maintenance (Grass Cutting) and air conditioning (BAS Override). For these examples, it could be different Crafts or Trades that are doing them such as IT, Custodial, Electrical and HVAC.

No matter the job or the shop or the department or the location, the common factor would be a Project (or a Budget) of "Graduations" to easily search the database for what is open vs. completed for any time range for any or all locations and see any additional statistics if you track labor and other expenditures. A report of these items could be handy for the next commencement to get an idea of what to expect and to be prepared for.

I mentioned last year that you could set up a schedule in PMDirect about graduation/commencement preparation, but also consider FSDirect's ability to speed up the process: you could create one event and check off the needed services as a Task that identifies the job type (custodial, grounds, audio-visual, food services, security, etc.) along with a description of the job. Those tasks can automatically notify someone a few days before the event of what and where (just be sure to note how much lead time someone would need to get the job done). The schedule can be "renewed" (basically, clones or duplicates or copies the existing record as a new record) for another location, date and/or time to save data entry. Those tasks could become incidents in ITDirect and work orders in MaintenanceDirect if someone chooses to convert any items that stand out.